Well what a weekend that was and I do admit timed well! We had sunny weather all week in Albany, a Cold raining Saturday and Saturday night (perfect time to be indoors playing games) and now a sunny Sunday!

Thankyou everyone that came to the event! It was a fantastic turnout and everyone was brilliant! It was great seeing PC and Console gamers out shouting profanities at one another across the room. So many were willing to help each other out, share equipment, and some trips to EB Games were made as people brought more games!

Here is what we learned from this LAN and how we’re going to make the next one even better…

  • Planning

Yeah, this was 3 weeks planning, and everything was done out of work hours and kept to a minimum on weekends. Once we got to the LAN it was just go for it and lets see how it works.  I think it did well but we’re going to start planning for the next LAN in a few weeks (Take a few weeks off first). Will see what we can do about the hall for Sunday.

 

  • Internet

The dreaded ‘I’ word at a LAN event. It’s now become a necessary evil that we need at LAN events to get some last minute updates, or authenticate games so you can play them. The only server issue we had was internet was so to start with. A few adjustments to the DNS and it was happy for the evening. Only 4.4GB was downloaded and that seems to mostly have been console updates.

By the next LAN I’ll throw together a proxy that should cache most files as they are accessed from the Internet to try and save download times. The speed of the Internet wasn’t an issue I felt. Was fast enough to use, and slow enough discouraging people form playing an online game at a LAN.

 

  • Network

It did well. I did see some lag spikes during some games of COD4 which I need to work on. I’ll be going over the LAN design once more to make sure everything is working efficiently but aside from that it was trouble free.

The switch over the console side had some config, which I hadn’t removed yet (sorry) so some ports did not appear to be working when connecting to them..

We did have an intranet (internal) website, www.ag.lan, which we had full of information about the LAN. Problem is Consoles cannot access this page so will need to working something for them or just have a general PC available where they can check it out (such as register for comps or order pizza).

 

  • Seating

Well, it became a case of “Grab those tables and put them down”. We were a bit all over the place and it did look a bit messy. I sat with some people during the LAN and worked out an efficient seating plan for the next LAN. We’ll also have a seat register on the website for the next LAN so you can choose your place.

 

  • Prizes

Lots of Nerf Guns, mostly due to a special at K-Mart. We’ll work on a verity of prizes for the next LAN and hopefully pickup some sponsorship for them! We’ll also start to utilize a prize register so if you do want to win a prize, you’ll need to register for competition. It just saves pulling you away if you’re not really interested.

Also, there was a problem with one competition where we had purposed one but it had been done without any admin knowledge. This is due to a lack of communication on everyone’s behalf. The major problem was a prize was taken from the display without any admin present. In the end we had to forfeit the competition. I’m sorry we had to do this but the moral that it was simply taken and the present admin wasn’t aware. I hope this does not discourage the parties involved from attending the next LAN but we will re-run the comp (with admins present) at the next LAN.

 

  • Physical Activity

The Nerf Wars were great! So many bullets, we estimated around 700 bullets in the room. Next LAN would like to try and do this again, and will see about using the gym for this. As for the relay races with cases and drives… yeah… wasn’t quiet expecting those out comes. Will arrange gloves next time or just not do it, or maybe a competition involving big hammers and cases that need to be compacted.  I think the game itself was fine, everyone seemed to enjoy it, just maybe next time do it a lil differently or make sure the cased are filed down properly.  Or maybe make them run with UPS’s instead!

  • Food and Drink availability.

Hopefully what we had was suitable. If you like, we maybe able to arrange some hot food during some peak times. Pizza was good! Due to it being such a big order, Joe-jo’s gave us free garlic bread. Will approached them before the next LAN to see if we can get some exclusive deal J. Maybe write in here that we over compensated on what was needed, so next time we’ll have the same variety, but maybe half as much, or make people state beforehand whether or not they want to bring they’re own drinks.

 

  • Entertainment

For Music, Our DJ, Atomik, did really well. His music was playing over Teamspeak, which again, didn’t help the console users. I’ll arrange for some big speakers so we can have some music playing during the event. Not loud but just enough to not have the place quiet.

For Video, we had Red VS Blue (Seasons 1 -4) played during the evening on the projector. Next LAN may put up my computer screen (playing games) when RVB is not on. May even investigate a media stream so if you want to watch RVB, you can from your computer, or even have the sound play through a teamspeak channel.

 

  • Lights

The hall I felt was well lit. Next time we’ll setup a lights-out schedule where we’ll turn the lights off. We’ll also (in co-op with the seating plan) setup a heads down area if you want to get some shuteye.

 

  • Variety of Games

MW3, BLOPS, and REACH were played lots on the consoles, and on the PC, Minecraft, COD4, and rFactor (to name a few). You are welcome to play whatever you want. Next LAN we’ll try and put up some RTS games!

 

Overall we learned a lot this LAN and I’m happy to say was very successful and I’m confident we can make the next one even better! Your feedback is always welcome and I look forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts and suggestions.

Photo’s and Video’s of the event are up on facebook.